LevaData and IBM Enhance Savings Opportunities and Transform Direct Procurement

Today LevaData announced a collaboration with IBM to deliver a cognitive analytics and direct procurement sourcing services solution that will give procurement leaders the power to achieve business-changing outcomes through actionable insights. The new offering, DirectSpend IQ, brings together IBM's expert managed services with LevaData's Cognitive Sourcing Platform to deliver insights and recommendations for direct procurement cost savings opportunities and process transformation.

Together, LevaData and IBM are embracing the idea that intelligent, agile supply chains are designed to learn from experience, creating greater reliability, transparency and new competitive advantages and delivering this capability to procurement teams. A recent report from the IBM Institute for Business Value, Cognitive Procurement: Seizing the AI opportunity, advises that to digitally transform supply management and direct materials procurement with new capabilities that can sense and act, inform and automate, CPOs should re-engineer existing workflows and roles for instant insights and connected experiences. Curating high-quality, proprietary data within the enterprise and external sources of insight, combined with AI and automation, can create new insights and user experiences.

"The technologies that transformed disciplines like engineering and finance have been slow to reach supply chain management and procurement. In an era defined by software, data and AI, the mission-critical procurement function needs to operate with the full benefit of AI-based predictive analytics," said LevaData founder and CEO Rajesh Kalidindi. "LevaData and IBM are committed to ensuring leaders in global manufacturing industries can achieve competitive advantage by increasing agility, driving efficiencies and reducing risk."

This capability is currently being adopted within IBM's own direct materials procurement organization to drive incremental increase in annual cost savings. Furthermore, IBM's procurement professionals can now focus more on building new value for the business, improving supplier engagement and servicing business needs in a more flexible, agile way. The LevaData platform enables visibility and end-to-end sourcing.

"Applied AI, analytics and process automation have become essential to innovative supply chain transformation," said IBM Chief Procurement Officer Bob Murphy. "As enterprises continue to invest in cognitive technologies to improve their agility and competitiveness, LevaData and IBM are committed to a solution that is able to adapt and learn."

The growing need for cognitive technologies among global manufacturers will be explored at LevaData's 2019 Cognitive Sourcing Summit, taking place in San Jose, California, on October 24 at the Silicon Valley Capital Club.

"Direct Spend IQ" is available now. Please visit www.levadata.com/IBM for more information.

About LevaData

LevaData helps global enterprises improve gross margins by reducing supply chain costs, with a focus on delivering measurable and accountable supply chain solutions and strategies that transform companies. The unique LevaData Cognitive Sourcingtm Platform allows customers to sense, recommend, act and learn. Customers include leaders in the top global supply chain organizations, as well as medium-sized OEMs seeking to achieve best-in-class direct materials sourcing practices. LevaData is headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information, visit www.levadata.com.